Fuzzy Warbles, Vol. 1 & 2

Demos: fools' gold of rock, diaries of the unsigned and unprepared alike. We mortals are rarely privy to these precious ...

Demos: fools' gold of rock, diaries of the unsigned and unprepared alike. We mortals are rarely privy to these precious, private moments, though there's a good case for that. Ideally, we never have to make due with demo recordings because our favorite artists release the stuff in genuine, full-grown versions. Sometimes when those people die (or go crazy, or possibly hire Phil Spector to clean up their mix even though they know full well nobody is going to be able to do anything with the syrup like "The Long and Winding Road"), record labels and estates get together to bring us What Might Have Been. Peaking a glimpse at the fake future can be very empowering, but is ultimately a bittersweet experience at best.

XTC figurehead Andy Partridge fits somewhere in the middle of the dead/crazy/lazy triangle. He's still alive, so I guess that puts him closer to the hallowed crazy/lazy paradox brought to you by the Kevin Shields Center for Non-Performing Arts. Yet, Partridge is hardly that reclusive: Fuzzy Warbles is a project largely the result of XTC's strike against Virgin Records. He'd written so many tunes during XTC's downtime that the band simply couldn't fit (or even rehearse) all of them for official release. The first two volumes of his demo series contain unfinished songs from throughout XTC's career, and what a silo of mixed four-track treasure they are.

As a caveat, I should mention that these will probably only appeal to the society of underground Anglophiles known as XTC fans. In a just world, Partridge's remarkable ability to form a tune might be more widely lauded, but as it stands, a collection of his demos fits most snugly in a niche market. In fact, XTC bassist Colin Moulding felt the project too risky to invest his time and money. Hence, we have (yet again) Partridge going against all commercial and political odds to bring his unborn children into the world. Luckily for him (and us), he generally outsmarts his own passive-aggressive exhibitionist tendencies via sheer songcraft.

In typical Partridge fashion, the best stuff on these CDs is the most frustrating-- mostly due to the question of how XTC managed not to include so many great songs on their records over time. The forgotten A-list includes the spectacular "Wonder Annual" (sentimental in the best possible way, and even Partridge laments this one never being released), "Ship Trapped in the Ice" (a virtual one-man rewrite of Magical Mystery Tour), "Everything" (a powerfully emotional ballad), "I Don't Want to Be Here" (had it been recorded, might have been the best song on Wasp Star) and the phantasmagoric avant-slop of "MOGO" and "GOOM", both of which prove you don't have to be hyped up on balls of any kind to be out there.

And yes, there are some tunes that might just as well have remained hidden. At one point, Partridge had been in the running to pen songs for Disney's James and the Giant Peach (Randy Newman ultimately got the gig). Though he'd never admit it, it's probably fortunate for Partridge that the soccer moms of America didn't get their first taste of his music via this movie, as all of his submissions fall far short of his usual standard. "Don't Let Us Bug Ya" (it's about bugs, hyuck) repeatedly attempts to make a song out of one lame joke, while "Everything Will Be Alright" may be the worst song he wrote in the 90s ("All I Dream of Is a Friend" from the same project, though not included on these volumes, came close). The problem for Partridge is that he appears to equate appealing to the masses with dumbing down his material. And the less said about his sub-Stan Freberg reggae answering machine gag, the better.

Furthermore, I would argue that these sets should've been limited to strictly unreleased compositions, omitting the demos for already familiar XTC songs. Most of these songs ("Then She Appeared", "Merely a Man", "That Wave") don't shed much new light on the previously released versions (though The Cure, Smiths and Dylan impersonations in a rough version of "That Wave" are spot-on classic), and more importantly, this angle has already been covered on 2002's Coat of Many Cupboards box. When an artist starts repeating himself via leftovers, I question what the future holds.

There are rumors that Partridge may expand the Fuzzy Warbles series to ten volumes (he swears he's got the backlog to fund it), and I guess that's going to mean a few more transactions for die-hard XTC fans. Hopefully, there are as many cherries in those trees as there are here-- which is to say, at least enough to justify the notion of Partridge making his drafts available while delivering an album of actual rehearsed and recorded stuff is put on the shelf much later this year. I'll play along for now (in a case of co-dependency at its worst), but will cry foul if "Grocery List in E-minor" ever appears on a tracklist.